The state secretariat. Telegraph picture

Patna, May 16: Weeding out corruption and bringing corrupt officials to book has been one of the major resolves of the Nitish Kumar-led NDA government in Bihar.

As a corollary to this resolve, the state government has taken a step to expedite cases in which government officials are facing departmental inquiries.

Now, every district would have a dedicated officer whose sole job would be to look into matters related to departmental inquiries. ADM-rank officers belonging to Bihar Administrative Service (BAS) would be deputed for this job.

Similarly, BAS officers holding the rank of joint-secretary would be deputed in all the nine divisions for carrying out the same work involving senior officers.

These designated officials would not be entrusted cases of departmental inquiries in which officials holding senior rank to them are involved. In such cases, department concerned would be asked to depute a special officer to carry out the job.

“The process of posting special officers in districts and divisional head- quarters would be completed by June 15 this year,” general administration department (GAD) principal secretary Deepak Kumar told The Telegraph today.

He said that these officials would not be given any other task and districts and divisional headquarters would have clear instructions on this front so that the designated officials can carry out their work expeditiously.

As things stand now, department inquiries are conducted by officials nominated by departmental heads in the state headquarters and district magistrates. As the responsibility is given to officials who are already engaged in other work, the inquiry puts additional load on them, leading to delay in completion of inquiry. The magnitude of the delay can be assessed from the fact that on an average a departmental inquiry is disposed of in two to three years.

According to rough estimates, over 1,000 such cases of departmental inquiries are pending at the state headquarters and in districts at present. This pendency has taken place despite pre-decided time limit for different kinds of inquiries. This time limit is seldom adhered to because of the workload on officials engaged in the inquiry work. The delay in inquiry not only hurts the government’s interest, as delay takes place in taking action against those involved in irregularities, it also hurts the interest of those facing the inquiry. Officials named in an inquiry are denied departmental promotion till the time the inquiry continues.

“The new system would take care of both these aspects as the designated officials would not only take up new cases but their services would also be used in expediting the pending cases,” said the GAD principal secretary.